


He Said, She Said

by Chaifootsteps



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Pillow Talk, Post-Coital Cuddling, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-03 12:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaifootsteps/pseuds/Chaifootsteps
Summary: Commander K Shepard was far too savvy to anticipate the generous things in life, and too jaded to anticipate the gentle ones. Garrus was both.
Fluffy interludes.





	1. Chapter 1

The opening on the wine diverges into two spouts; the bottle segmented, like the chambers of a heart. Dextro out the left side, levo out the right. Both sweet reds. 

One glass apiece. Too much at stake to risk more than that.

She kisses his mandibles, tip to base, and somehow it feels as natural as breathing. The way he pushes her hair back to nuzzle the crook of her neck is sincerely hungry, coaxing her voice to hitch in a way it hasn’t for years. But it’s not enough to change this. 

And they both know it.

“Hey,” she says, a little lift at the end. Gentle and diplomatic, halfway to the voice she uses when coaxing down crewmates, but not quite there and thank god for that. “If you want to just lay with me a while, I’d be good with that, too.” 

“…Are you sure?”

“Positive. I don’t want this to be a mark we tick off because we think we have to. Besides, we’ve got…” A glance at the clock by the bed. “What, an hour and twenty minutes? We’d be rushing it.”

Garrus’s eyes drop and K feels like she couldn’t have said anything more wrong. “Shit. Shouldn’t have postponed this to the last second…I don’t know what I was thinking…”

“Whatever it was, good job on it. It worked out better this way.”

Mercifully, he lets himself be convinced.

They curl into one another like shells. She lets her breath fall on the place where his neck is soft as a crocodile’s throat, smelling like rifle oil and the doughy plainness of unscented soap, and runs her fingers down his jaw like she has nowhere else to be. His free arm winds around her back, and when she doesn’t usher it away, strokes out the tension below her shoulders and beneath her shirt.

For the first fifty-seven minutes, they talk about everything but the impending mission. Families and half-cocked childhood dreams and what was going through their minds the first time they saw deep space. How quiet this incarnation of the Normandy is; its showers hotter and its water softer. Anything that sits comfortably on the silence.

( _”Peaches. Peanut butter on anything. Kitsune udon the way my mom used to make it. You?” “Besper shoulder. Seared on the outside, raw in the middle. If you pick just one Turian dish to risk a reaction over, make it that one.”_ )

And finally, when ignoring the inevitable grows more painful than it’s worth, they talk about the mission.

“I think we might make it through this,” she says, because the wine is good and the bed is soft and it’s enough to make her mean it, if only in the confines of this moment. “The crew’s ready as they’ll ever be, and the ship’s upgraded inside and out…if there’s any extra trick we missed, it’s news to me.”

“If anyone’s getting us through this in one piece, it’s you.” There’s an argument to be made there – Akuze, the Fifth Fleet, Ashley. She leaves them unspoken and toys with his claws around the empty beaker of wine until he sets it aside to hold her hand. “You’ve got a way of inspiring strangers in impossible ways and doing impossible things, and me…well, I’ve got a knack for shooting people from a long, long way off. I think we’ll both come through just fine.”

Whether he believes it or not is almost beside the point. The man could make a living selling reassurances on tape.

“…I think you might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She feels him smile, softly. Sharp little teeth. 

Quiet, then, his scars pressed to her hair. The flash of fish, of the numbers on the clock. Twenty-three minutes to arrival. He fidgets well before he ever speaks.

“If we _do_ make it back…if you want…maybe we can…try this again? No mood music this time. And better wine.” And then, far too quickly, because of course he does…“Only if you still want to, obviously.”

“I want to if _you_ want to.”

“Shepard, if the universe were even slightly less of a mess, I swear to you we would be breaking the bed right now.”

That throws her. Throws something unseen, too, something that’s been hovering over them for who knows how long, and K can’t help it. She laughs a ridiculous, wine-warmed laugh into his chest.

“I’ll wear the good underwear,” she promises. “Not these practical little shorts that hold everything together.” She looks up, briefly anxious, and to her relief, he joins her in chuckling. 

“Purely for the record? I can work with practical little shorts.”

Twenty minutes, fifteen seconds. 

A wine bottle warming on the table. Sheets laid over bare feet. The coal black shine of space hamster eyes, and blue neon lights on the ceiling.

The sound of his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

_They’re alive,_ K thinks. And that, like the starched white sheets and the lingering taste of champagne, is a luxury. 

It’s not over and won’t be, god knows, but for now, the unpresuming rumble of the ship is proof of the reprieve they’ve somehow succeeded in carving out She can take the lift up and find Mordin tapping away in the light of his console, or Thane meditating behind a locked door, or the crew members pretending not to slack off. The mess hall will smell like dish cleaner and fry oil. The celebratory bottles they popped will inevitably turn up in the cargo hold.

_They’re fine, they’re fine… **we’re** fine._

Once that thought sinks in, the rest becomes easier. After all, she’s sweaty and sated and thinking that life can be so very, very forgiving…

And would be even if she didn’t currently have an attractive, naked turian stretched out beside her.

Garrus sleeps like someone arranged him there awkwardly, pillows stuffed beneath his cowl and his leg to keep his head propped and the spurs from ripping the mattress, but he’s breathing deep and languid and that’s all that really matters. Moreover, his arm is resting around her waist in an unconscious, possessive way that warms her all the way to her fingertips. 

As she recalls, she’d meant to close her eyes for just a moment. Just half a second, in case he decided to slip off at some point in the night and this was all she had to savor. When she opened them again, the clock read 05:12. 

And Garrus was still beside her.

She turns to cozy up closer, expecting to ache, but not terribly surprised when the old, familiar twinge of pain up her back doesn’t come. 

_“I’d say it’s been a while, but that’d be an understatement,” she’d said, his hard, sharp pelvic plates cradled between her thighs. Heart hammering, wound so tightly she could barely see, needing that long, slow glide inwards more than she could ever remember needing anything, and yet…“At least…go a little easy on me?”_

_She’d meant it as a joke, but he knew. Somehow, he always knew._

_“You tell me if anything’s uncomfortable,” he’d said, forehead pressed to hers. “I don’t care if we empty out that entire bottle. I don’t care if we stop altogether. Alright?”  
_

_“…Sounds good.”_

If nothing else, K can say (with considerable satisfaction) that Mordin’s little warning proved unnecessary in the end. She’s had space suits that chafed harder than his skin does.

She lifts his claws to her lips, trying not to wake him. He does anyway.

“ _Hnnn_ …” he murmurs, with all the vim and vigor of cooked porridge. Blue eyes stumble open, taking her in through half-lids that can’t be bothered to lift any higher. “… _Spirits_ , you look good with sex hair…”   

She laughs an ungraceful laugh. ‘Too far from awake to be shy’, she decides, is a state he wears very well. “Good morning to you too, smooth talker.” 

He smiles sleepily and everything about the world gets a little kinder.

“What time is it?” he asks. “Time for you to head up and take care of something heroic?”

“Not until ten.”

“Good.”

He adjusts the sheets higher around them and somehow pulls her in closer, and for a while she assumes he’s about to drop off again – which strikes her as a very solid plan. They hadn’t been in much of a shape for stimulating pillow talk last night; even now, it’s easier to slip into the slow poetry of skin on skin on carapace, and the aimless traversing of fingers along new paths. 

(She  _really_ likes the way his claws keep skimming the curve of her backside, like they’re getting used to the fact that they’re allowed to.)

Presently enough, her stomach growls. Not four minutes later, his does the same. 

“So what do turians usually do for breakfast?”

“On a good day, agamis. It’s sort of a gruel mixed with chopped liver.” A beat. “And collagen. Lots of collagen.”

“Mmm…pancakes,” she says, half kidding. “Let’s do pancakes.”

He chuckles. “I have no idea what those are, Shepard.”

“It’s fine. I have no idea how to make them.”

Getting out of bed is bittersweet. She pulls on an oversized sleeping shirt, retrieves the lacy little undergarments from their landing point on the coffee table, and considers them for only a second before tossing them aside once again. Pajama pants it is.

Garrus watches her from the bed, retrieved clothing articles in hand. His expression is amused in that unique way only turians can pull off.

“…What?” she asks with a smirk.

“Nothing, nothing. Just thinking of the old days. I mean, I don’t think we ever saw you sit down to _eat_ , and now…well…” 

“And now you get to watch me hunt around for pants.”

“Among other things, yes.” _Oh,_ the way he’s looking at her is killing her. Not such a far cry from the way he looked at her last night, some mixture of astonished and ravenous; like she’s a book of surprises and he’s only just coming around to the idea that they might be mostly pleasant ones. Like it’s a miracle she’s here at all. “…It’s nice to see. You with your hair down, I mean.” 

She has no reason to resist kissing him. Why even try?

“You make me _happy_ , Garrus _._ ”Just a murmur against his mouth, hands smoothing over his crest. _“_ God, it’s crazy how happy you make me. And that’s all I want, to see you happy too.”

He leans back, taking her with him. Her heart leaps high in her chest, and there it stays.

“ _Well, then. One less thing to worry about_.”

* * *

In compliance with regulations it isn’t, but that’s fine. Less than 72 hours ago, they braved a suicide mission into forbidden space, stormed the Collectors, saved the crew with seconds to spare, and lived to tell the tale; it stands to reason they can take their chances with a half-dressed mess hall run. The only hiccup that occurs is when mess sergeant Gardner comes in, sees them, turns on his heel, and strolls out without commentary.

They retreat back to the captain’s quarters with steaming plates in hand – the reddish ovals on Garrus’s smelling strongly of warming spices and cat food, her own breakfast resembling pancakes the way a crayon doodle resembles a still life. She maintains that they’re slathered in enough butter to make up for their shortcomings.

The bed is still vaguely warm, the sheets still tangled. They talk about how they should probably put the lube away, but don’t because it keeps making them laugh. For once, the heavy questions seem distant and translucent, and the future crackles with possibility.

Lopsided chocolate chip pancakes. Tin pouch of orange juice. The way she rakes her fingers through her hair whenever she blushes.

They don’t know it yet, but it’s how he’ll always remember her.


	3. Chapter 3

_‘The Shores in the Shade?’_

_‘The Shores of Time?’_

_‘The Shores of When We Were Young?’_

Crap. That last one sounds like what you’d get if you flipped up a rock, pulled the person living under it out into the blinding, unforgiving sun, and asked them to cook up a dramatic title without any context whatsoever.

And if they were also Elcor.

Call it a kind of personal challenge…his white elephant, as the humans say. A few years back, he’d staggered home after working for 57 hours straight, ignored the shadowy figures milling on the periphery of his vision, and promptly passed out with both his pants and the TV still on. He’d awoken nearly a day and a half later, in the dark, with a copious river of drool sticking down the pillow and the last fifteen minutes of a movie in progress.

A silly thing, really…definitely nothing you’d turn to twice. There had been a baleful looking turian bidding farewell to a generic looking asari…a sappy talk about what could have been, but clearly wasn’t…a song playing in the background that set his ‘need to download’ alarms ticking. And of course, none of it distinct enough to turn up any extranet searches.

 For no substantial reason, it’s haunted him ever since.

_‘By the Shores of a Memory? Maybe?’_

That’s the one he keeps coming back to. That is, assuming it’s actually “the shores of” and not “the sands of.”

He feels remotely guilty about obsessing over this when Shepard’s doing _real work_ no less than four feet away from him. Knowing her, she just negotiated a hostage situation on a remote moon somewhere .

(Or better yet, sorted out the looming question of whether she’s going to face jail time back on Earth, but they’ve made a pact not to think about that and so he won’t.)

Not for the first time, nor the last, he indulges in a brief interlude of simply looking at her; long fingers flying over the keys, bangs pushed to the side, blankets plumped up around her because she gets cold easily. The screen reflects white chips into the striking, striking grey of her eyes, and that bruise ~~he was so proud of on her inflicting~~ on her collarbone has faded to a very gentle shade of pastel mint.

Her ear pieces are in, which probably indicates she’s finished answering messages and moved onto animal videos. Garrus feels a little better about sinking the last 45 minutes into The Great Big Database of Interspecies Romance Flicks.

He lays his foot across hers beneath the blanket; she smiles without looking up and wraps her toes around his right claw. Humans may have the creepiest little feet ever conceived (too much like their hands), but Shepard’s are _Shepard_ ’s, and damned if his day didn’t just get significantly better.

_‘Hmm…Our Shores?’_

No, that turns up vacation condos on Kahje.

‘ _Memory Shores?’_

A very ritzy looking cemetery. With an astonishingly uninspired name.

_‘The Shores of our Youth?’_

Porn.

Spirits, this is ridiculous. It was so far from a _good_ movie, and he just _knows_ the moment he actually finds it, all the intrigue’s going to go out of it. The stupid goodbye speech is going to fall flat and that song he wants so desperately is going to be nice enough, but not worth the time and effort of downloading and putting on his playlist…

To hell with it.

“K, what’s the movie with the sad turian and tattooed asari who break up in the docking station? ‘The Shores of Something Something?’”

Slowly, Shepard looks up from her work. She pops her earpieces out, dropping them on the couch where she’s never going to find them again.

“…What did you just say?”

“I’m trying to track down a movie. It’s the one where the asari with the gaudy tattoos--”

“No, no,” she interrupts. “I mean the other thing.”

Garrus’s brain trots to catch up.

…Oh. _Ohhhh._

 “Ah…sorry about that. It just sort of slipped. I’ll try and keep the informality to a dull—“

He never finishes, because suddenly, she’s kissing him square on the mouth.  His hands fly instinctively to her waist, the dip above her hips. She’s blanket warmed and hard muscle under three layers of so soft, he couldn’t care less about the damn movie, and when she finally leans back, she’s wearing the brightest, most incredible smile he’s ever seen her give.

And just like that, the Commander Shepard who is his boss slips a little further away, and the weight of something far more tentative and precious settles in his palm like a warm stone.

 “K,” he offers again, letting the word rest a little on his tongue. It’s a good sensation, easy and casual as a sunny day off, free of the immense weight her last name has come to carry all on its lonesome. If a word could sport legs, it feels like it’d be bouncing on them. “You know, I could get used to saying it.”

“You’d be the only one aboard the ship who ever did,” she says. “…Well, you and Kasumi.”

“There you go. Now I’m jealous.” He is, a _little_ , but not terribly surprised either; she and Kasumi have made one beeline too many for that awful noodle stand on the Citadel – the one they share an open, unapologetic hatred of -- to be on informal terms. K laughs.

“I think you’ve still got a couple of things up on Kasumi.”

“Two or three, maybe.” His thumb meanders along her cheekbone, and he familiarizes himself with each freckle; the way the sepia of her skin threatens to swallow them up. “ _K_ …”

There are about a thousand little unspoken things milling in the look she’s giving him. Each and every one of them makes him feel richly, impossibly rewarded.

“So. What’s this about an asari with gaudy tattoos?”

“…Asari with… _oh!_ Just a movie that’s been on the tip of my tongue forever. It’s the one where the turian and the asari part ways on the back gate of their shuttle. He tells her ‘I did love you,’ they dance one last time, the music swells…”

K doesn’t miss a beat.

_“_ ’The Shores of You and Me? _’”_

The space hamster has just enough time to scurry for cover before he lifts her clear off the ground.


End file.
